Islamic State group claims Damascus police headquarters attack

"Our investigations are ongoing to find out where they came from and how", Mohammad Kheir Ismail, Damascus police chief, told state TV from outside the headquarters.

Two terrorist suicide bombers blew themselves up with two explosive belts in front of the Police Command's building in Khalid Ibn al-Walid Street in Damascus.

Two assailants detonated explosive belts outside a police station, an official from the Interior Ministry was quoted as saying by the state news agency SANA. "The guards opened fire on them, forcing them to blow themselves up before they entered the building and achieved their goals", the ministry said in a statement broadcast on state media.

The interior ministry said one person had been killed and six injured in the attack.

Syrian opposition activists say government troops are pushing deeper into an Islamic State stronghold in the country's east, the town of Mayadeen.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported five dead, not including the three attackers. At least 17 people were killed last week during a similar attack on a police station in the southern Midan district.

A US-led global coalition has been providing air support to a Kurdish-Arab alliance, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), also fighting ISIL in its former northern bastion of Raqqa city and Deir Az Zor.